


Eye of the Beholder

by lifetimeoflaughter



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Feels, Avengers Tower, Life after the Battle of New York, Post-Avengers (2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:00:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22018270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifetimeoflaughter/pseuds/lifetimeoflaughter
Summary: Natasha's life, post-New York.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Eye of the Beholder

**Author's Note:**

> I felt sad about natasha. Here we are! Again!

The worst part about all of this - the Avengers, the Tower, the living together - it’s not that she doesn’t care for it, or for them. _It’s that they don’t think she cares._

Natasha looks self-serving. it’s what she was taught to be, along with strategic, sexy, and scary. She was made to be ruthless, agile, sophisticated, deadly, in no particular order. To sum it up, she looks self-serving, as if self-preservation is her only instinct.

And for a long time that’s how things were. Natasha smiled mysterious smiles to greedy men who she then extracted sensitive information from under the guise of a pretty, stupid, redhead. and then, of course, killed them. She remembers not caring for anyone, save one. 

Sasha, the sweet, scared blonde in the bed next to hers in the Red Room, who cried too loudly and didn’t listen when Natalia hushed her. Soft Sasha, who always had Natalia to look after her. Skinny, shy, Sasha, who had lashes longer than a mile, and who tried her hardest to not falter even through the hardest exercises. Sasha, who disappeared on her twelfth birthday and never came back. 

The number of people she cared about went from one to zero, to one again, when she met Barton. She could not charm him like she could charm others, and he, he of all people, charmed her into defecting. It wasn’t just charm, but love. But when she turned around to declare her love for him, it was too late. she had watched his back on countless missions, and now she had to watch him get married. 

It just added more people to her list that she cared about - Laura, and their kids. With SHIELD having recruited her, she found herself caring more and more and more about Agent Hill, her sister-in-arms, Director Fury, her superior officer, and everyone she knew, for the first time, had value to her. 

Natalie found herself caring about the Man of Iron, and his wife-to-be (in the distant future).

Natasha found herself caring about Captain Rogers, and Dr. Banner, and even for the Lord of Thunder.

She couldn’t show it, but each of them meant so much to her that if she thought about it too much she thought her heart would break. 

She went along with Stark’s plan. She moved into the Tower, got a room with a view of all of New York and snazzy interior design, soft lighting for late nights, and a bonus of five male housemates.

She was actually kind of happy, you know. Then Tony made the remarks, you know, about how Ms. Natasha probably hated all their noise and ruckus and was suited to a higher class of housemate.

she didn’t know what to say, so she raised her one eyebrow, did her signature coy smile and slid off the arm of the sofa to go hide in her room, leaving the five to watch her leave as soundlessly as she came.

And then it was just that. She’d wander into the kitchen and Bruce would be looking for sugar for his tea and Clint would be helping him, and neither of them would know where the sugar was because to be fair, Stark’s kitchen was huge. So when she sees them struggling and Clint asks Bruce to have Natasha help them, she strides forward to open the nearest cupboard to help them with their search until–

“I wouldn’t want to bother her,” says Bruce, adjusting his glasses anxiously. “She’s probably here for something important and I wouldn’t want to waste her time and, well… she scares me,” he says, the last part in a whisper.

Natasha doesn’t know what to do.

She walks into Cap trying to operate the TV and asking JARVIS for help, and he doesn’t notice her come in until she startles him.

“Need some help?”

Taken aback, Steve smiles nervously and says

“Ah, well, just trying to watch the news, but, uhm, I wouldn’t want to bother you with my lack of future-knowledge,”

A slight frown crosses her face. “It’s no problem, really, just press here and here and voila; you have your daily news.”

He smiles awkwardly and thanks her, and sits down to watch TV. Natasha, satisfied, goes to the kitchen to make some overly sweet hot chocolate and read a book. Five minutes later, out of the corner of her eye, she sees Steve leave the sofa and walk away as quietly as he can like he’s trying not to alert her to his leaving.

She doesn’t know how to feel.

Tony makes upgrades for her suit and leaves before she can thank him.

Thor doesn’t talk to her much, but even he doesn’t ask her for anything if he can avoid it.

They don’t even invite her to their first movie night, an excuse for Tony to introduce Steve to modern cinema. Pepper’s there, she can hear her laughing with Tony and her heart breaks a little bit each time. When she inquires later, they respond with a general shrug and “we didn’t think you’d want to spend time with us off missions,” “we thought you had more important S.H.I.E.L.D. work to be doing,” “thought you’d think this was dumb,”.

It hurts, like a deep sort of ache in her heart. She didn’t know what she was hoping for when she joined them in their tower. Maybe it was friends. Maybe it was more like a family. Maybe she had set her expectations too high and this was nothing like that. Or maybe she was just broken and worthless, and not worth their time or love. Maybe, she had just been fantasizing again, dreaming of a reality she didn’t deserve. 

She didn’t know why it hurt so much. She was a Black Widow- trained in every form of death, attached to this world by almost nothing - and for a time, it had made sense. She was never really her - you could call her by any name beginning with N and she’d respond. She’d spent so much time being other people that she can’t pick a persona to show them, so she settles on the inbetween. 

(the inbetween is her neutrality, when she’s not a preppy secretary or a damsel in distress, when she’s laying low, with her subtle smirks and signature side glances, no talking, barely even breathing.)

Maybe the Avengers couldn’t accept her because there was nothing to accept. She wasn’t really a person, after all. _She knew what it was to be unmade._ The problem wasn’t the Avengers - they were all good people. Steve, and Bruce, and Clint and Tony and Thor - no matter what persona they displayed, they were all good at their core. She wasn’t good at her core - she was barely even a person at all. So it was her fault. It was her fault that she wouldn’t be loved by anyone.

Nobody loved her for anything other than her physique, anyway. No one ever knew her because there was nothing to know, nothing to feel with her, nothing that belonged to her, nothing that wasn’t a fake, manufactured specifically for the viewer, beauty in the eye of the beholder. 

And she stands, at the top of the Avengers tower, looking down at New York. She can see for miles and miles, uninterrupted busy city. She knows Matt’s out there somewhere, longing for Karen and mourning Elektra and wanting to fix his city. She misses him - even if they didn’t last very long, Matty never bothered with outward appearances, she thinks with a smile. 

she’s tired of being scared of. she’s tired of being stoic, and silent. she’s tired of being the one left out when all she wants is someone to see her as a person.

She’s tired, _full stop._

 _It’s not that she doesn’t care, it’s that she cares too much._


End file.
